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posted by martyb on Saturday July 13 2019, @03:10AM   Printer-friendly
from the what-happens^W-crashes-in-Vegas... dept.

Back in 2017, Las Vegas' self-driving shuttle service got into a minor collision after just an hour into its year-long trial. While it truly was a minor incident and nobody got hurt, the fact that an autonomous vehicle was involved prompted the National Transportation Safety Board to launch a probe. Now, the agency has wrapped up its investigation and has revealed two probable causes for the incident. First is that the truck that collided with the shuttle didn't stop when it was supposed to, which is consistent with the local government's claim after the accident. The other is that the autonomous vehicle attendant didn't have easy access to the shuttle's manual controller.

Apparently, the truck driver thought the shuttle would stop at a "reasonable" distance from the truck. Although the shuttle did start slowing down when it was 98.4 feet away, it's not programmed to stop until it's only 9.8 feet away from obstacles. The attendant hit the emergency stop button when the vehicle was 10.2 feet away from the truck, but it clearly wasn't enough to prevent the incident.

In an interview with the investigators, the attendant said they considered switching to manual mode to move the shuttle out of the way, but they didn't have easy access to its handheld controller. [...] When the accident happened, the controller was stored in an enclosed space at one end of the passenger compartment.

https://www.engadget.com/2019/07/12/las-vegas-autonomous-shuttle-crash-probe/


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 13 2019, @08:06AM (8 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 13 2019, @08:06AM (#866527)

    Controlling it from France is a little bizarre. Why not do it from the same continent? Canada?

    But if the bus is going slow, the latency could be sufficient. It's just that this system sucks and was not ready for the real world.

  • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday July 13 2019, @02:35PM (7 children)

    by RS3 (6367) on Saturday July 13 2019, @02:35PM (#866624)

    > It's just that this system sucks and was not ready for the real world.

    You didn't even glance at the article, did you? The truck hit the autonomous shuttle. The shuttle had fully stopped, but the truck kept going. The shuttle would have needed to back up to avoid the truck. Most humans would not do that, and if they did, they might back into someone else. The truck driver was cited.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 13 2019, @05:02PM (6 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 13 2019, @05:02PM (#866666)

      I think that some humans would have the sense to back up a foot or two (0.3 - 0.6 meter), which sounds like all that was needed to avoid the fender bender. An alert bus driver would realize that the truck driver had either a blind spot or wasn't looking in the direction of the bus, and didn't realize the bus had moved into the truck's path.

      Do any AVs have that much sense, to "realize" what can be seen by the drivers of surrounding vehicles? Clearly this one didn't.

      I've had a number of cases like this recently--a new water main is being installed alongside my curvy suburban street, with large excavators (on tracks), dump trucks and several smaller construction vehicles zipping back and forth. When the equipment is in the street, I'm very careful to catch the eye of the operator, to make sure he sees that I'm passing. Or, if an excavator is facing the other way, I make sure to pass quickly, so that even if the bucket of the excavator swings around, I'll be out of the way in plenty of time.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Saturday July 13 2019, @06:03PM (5 children)

        by RS3 (6367) on Saturday July 13 2019, @06:03PM (#866684)

        Yes, agreed, me too. However, some people, as seen in many youtube videos, will throw it in reverse and hit the gas without looking. Then the crash will be their fault. In this case, it was the fault of the truck driver, and I'm glad he was cited.

        (stating what seems obvious) We're living in a beta development society- machines, drugs, software, everything is being released into the public and we're the beta test site. The designers will learn from this and may include reversing for collision avoidance. I'd still like the truck driver to be cited, and he would be with video evidence (of his very bad driving).

        • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 13 2019, @06:40PM (4 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 13 2019, @06:40PM (#866689)

          > We're living in a beta development society-

          Gave you a +1. Of course I've noticed that beta testing is going on around me, but you've pointed out that this is rapidly becoming the norm. Is this an inevitable consequence of the exponential(?) growth of tech where new stuff has to be released faster and faster to beat the competition?

          A friend works at a chip foundry (he's now close to retirement) and said that Moore's law is basically the business plan. It predicts where they will have to be in a few years...and looking at the dark side, it sets the speed of the hamster wheel that the foundry staff is on.

          All this beta testing in public seems like Moore's law is turning into a dystopia. I don't like it! My state doesn't allow self-driving car testing on the road, but I'm sure there are many other new developments being tested all around me.

          • (Score: 3, Touché) by anubi on Sunday July 14 2019, @12:00AM (1 child)

            by anubi (2828) on Sunday July 14 2019, @12:00AM (#866746) Journal

            Once the bugs are worked out, the device is now considered "mature" and discontinued.

            --
            "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
            • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday July 14 2019, @03:29AM

              by RS3 (6367) on Sunday July 14 2019, @03:29AM (#866784)

              Once the bugs are worked out, the device is now considered "mature" and discontinued.

              Too sad but too true. "Obsolete" and "Unsupported" are other words I loath.

          • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday July 14 2019, @03:38AM (1 child)

            by RS3 (6367) on Sunday July 14 2019, @03:38AM (#866785)

            Thanks, mod-point-giving AC. :)

            How about this explanation: as an engineer, the #1 thing I'm supposed to have on my resume is NOT how I improved a product, but how I cheapened, er, sorry, cost-minimized, something. Don't get me wrong, I'm all about efficiency in all ways, but the cost-cutting pressure never lets up.

            At most jobs I've had the prevailing pressure from management was to push things out the door. This is making me grouchy- I'll write more another time when I'm not so very tired.

            I'll add this: rumor has it that in the 1960s, IBM invented "vaporware" - promised things that did not yet exist, during sales negotiations and written into contracts. Not sure if that's true, but I've worked at companies that did that. I actually love a challenge, but not the pressure. I'm remembering some jovial salesmen who would sheepishly approach me after a tradeshow saying, "sorry, but I sold XYZ idea I had. Can we make that? Please please please?" His approach always worked with me, but some others not so much.

            • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 14 2019, @04:33AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 14 2019, @04:33AM (#866800)

              Long before IBM in the 1960s.

              My father worked at Vought before WWII. When the Navy requested bids for new carrier based planes, Vought proposed two designs and expected that the more conventional would win the competition. Instead the "vaporware" F4U Corsair gull wing concept won (although it was proposed as eye candy)...and then they had to make it work. There were many, many problems that the engineers and flight test staff had to sort (not many known outside the company), but eventually it was made into a very good aircraft.